Bespook Nehru

[alden]

We don’t always get things right, do we? Even Princes and Dukes can go awry…



I suppose this is a Nehru jacket? Here is an advert from ’35.



Is anyone buying?

Cheers

M Alden

[whyescalar]

I have been in India during their winter months, to a pretty swish event, and the odd one or two Hindu gentlemen, a bit older, carried them off with aplomb. One was a Maharaja.

[DD MacDonald]

Michael, the Nehru is not the faux pas your initial impulse may consider it to be, though it does cross into the costume.

The brother of a close friend turned 40 a year or two back and held a three day party in Venice. I kid you not, 3 days, dead swish. The gala was to be "fancy formal wear" and my friend responded by going to Favourbrook and having them run up a Nehru in a velvet jacquard of sorts. Not garish and elegantly finished. Just the thing for the party.

For my friend, the jacket was an echo of his youth. Dinners in his mother's house we formal, men in dinner jackets and ladies in dresses. As a boy, dinner jackets were not done and a stiff shirt and tie a presumed abomination. The solution in my friend's house was a velvet Nehru jacket. Simple lines, understated, formal. A boy of 6 or 7 looked just the thing.

Fast forward to the current time, the Favourbrook jacket has made a couple of outings stateside, worn in the same way that a velvet smoking jacket is sometimes substituted for standard dinner rig. It's always good to see some variety in what men are wearing, especially when there is a personal history or eccentricity involved. Life would be just too boring without.

A touch of costume yes; but lets be honest, costume and a touch of theater are part and parcel with formal wear worn for social occasions like parties.

Thinking past the Nehru jacket, i'm really thinking about how I can get my self invited to my friend's brother's 50th!

DDM

[couch]

Michael, you're right that Nehru's tunics looked not a little like the clerical sack and clerical frock in your '35 advert (except for the romantic touch of the rose in the buttonhole):



However, this famous shot by Cartier-Bresson of Nehru with the Mountbattens suggests that PMoK's inspiration might owe at least as much to the naval uniform tunic a la Lord Louis (the collar treatment is almost identical in height, shape, and closure):



PMoK's version appears to have a fly front and to be made of a fairly porous silk or perhaps linen. DDM may be right as to the costume effect, but I wonder whether PMoK might not also have been seeking a cooler alternative to the usual fitted collar and tie during this summer's London heat wave.

I actually don't know the origin of the east Asian mandarin collar or the Indian standing collar of similar type. Is it possible there was some cross-pollination with colonial military tunics? I would assume the Chinese version predates Western influence, but that may be incorrect. Could the Nehru and the tunic be branches of the same sartorial family tree?

[NCW]

The Naval influence is an interesting idea that most of would probably not have thought of. Just to make explicit what Couch mentioned in passing, the two coats in Mr Alden's second illustration are indeed not Nehru jackets but clerical (as indicated by the plain use of the book and glasses as props). There is no Eastern influence there at all; instead, the design as shown is now about five hundred years old, and is very distantly related to the Roman toga, which pastors retained as a wrap-around garment when the rest of the world moved on.

So, the 'modern' Nehru jacket is clearly the most traditional clothing of all, combining military, clerical, and Eastern traditions far predating the Regency. I suggest we all switch back straight away from our contemporary tweed suits.

[dopey]

There is nothing wrong with the Nehru, even as worn by Prince Michael, other than its rarity - and therefore its oddity. It is not unflattering and appears comfortable and well cut (I notice that the Prince retains his desire to have his neck covered and transferred the duty from his shirt collar to the tunic collar).
But I have no need or interest in one.

[Concordia]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jDbMzp86tOc
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N6K_IuBsRM4&feature=fvw

[Costi]

Yes... Toscanini.
But what about this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rujvOtTR ... re=related
What difference of expression, of the body language. Yes, the music is different, too - but that doesn't account for it all. It is a different taste, a different way, a different kind of person. Celibidache would probably have abhorred the idea of wearing a black Nehru buttoned up to his chin - he would have felt constricted, restricted, put in a straitjacket.
Look at the first 10 seconds here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RtY3neT3MeU
(yes, I inverted the parts)
He is actually holding on to his lapel while getting into the atmosphere (and waiting for the orchestra to be ready). What a natural gesture - in those seconds of suspense before the beginning, the tailcoat offers him something to suspend his arm from. But what if you don't find a lapel when you need it most?
However, I admit it works fine with Toscanini One was feared and respected by the orchestra. The other one was loved and admired.

[couch]

Let me put this as a question: what if any is the difference in style or effect, in your views, between PMoK's and Lord Louis's standing collars, under which no collared shirt is worn (and which in PMoK's case is noticeably not snug against his neck) and those of Toscanini, Nehru, and all the '60s Nehru-jacket wearers who wore either banded shirts or turtlenecks visibly under their standing-collar jackets?

[couch]

I ran across this image and couldn't resist adding it to this thread:



Nureyev, of course, with Lee Radziwill, Jacqueline Kennedy's younger sister.

Several things interest me about this photo. First, the line of Nureyev's jacket seems quite good, even classic--shoulder not built up or extended excessively, a natural fall over the upper arm at the sleeve head, some drape at the chest. The accordioned white turtleneck, typical of the sixties, could be thought similar in effect to the Regency linen neckcloth around a high collar.

But the main thing is the degree to which the wild python-skin-patterned jacket (with Rudik it might easily have been real python-skin) does not dominate the wearer. Almost anyone else (apart perhaps from the young Mick Jagger) would have looked like a clown, but not Nureyev. Flamboyant, yes, but not a clown. With a head like that, and his presence, he could dominate almost any costume. In fact he looked his best (when clothed at all) when in such evening "costume" or on stage. Here he is (in stage makeup) with Dame Margot a couple of years earlier:



This reinforces Michael's oft-repeated observation that the man makes the clothes, and not the other way around. Nureyev often didn't look very good in his "daily" dress--he was given to oddly shaped leather caps and sloppy sweaters. This may have partly been his way of turning down the thermostat of celebrity when he was working or relaxing. Or it may have been just bad taste. But when he was "on," for a period of twenty years or so, he was a work of art.

(To be clear, I'm not proposing this jacket, or Nureyev, as a model for anything. Just mulling why I didn't find the first photo laughable).

[Noble Savage]

Let me put this as a question: what if any is the difference in style or effect, in your views, between PMoK's and Lord Louis's standing collars, under which no collared shirt is worn (and which in PMoK's case is noticeably not snug against his neck) and those of Toscanini, Nehru, and all the '60s Nehru-jacket wearers who wore either banded shirts or turtlenecks visibly under their standing-collar jackets?

Military tunics are worn with what is known as a patrol collar, it fits under the tunic's own.

[couch]

Thanks for this intelligence, NS, I stand corrected. Nice to see some old threads still generating interest. Best wishes for the new year!

[Concordia]

I no longer remember the precise clip showing Toscanini, but if it was a Nehru jacket it would have been for rehearsals. Bruno Walter also wore such a thing under similar circumstances. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A8nS3JO-BzQ

And after his seniors' heyday, Bernstein tried to get the NY Philharmonic to use a variant of Nehru jackets for the informal afternoon preview concerts. A foreshadowing of the all-black codes which are now very common in the UK. I rather like the idea, although it was too much associated with bellhops in those days to get any traction.

https://nyphil.tumblr.com/post/31416947 ... in-fashion

[Noble Savage]

An interesting read on the nehru: https://www.bondsuits.com/blofelds-navy ... t-spectre/

In the comments section we find:

the Nehru jacket as well as the Mao jacket are to my understanding “copies” of the Austrian Steireranzug which was invented n around 1850 by the brother of the Austrian emperor Erzherzog Johan. that might be the reason also why Waltz wears such a jacket as an Austrian, even in the Bond Movie . the Steueranzug is the MOST iconic Suit from Austrian – nearly any men has one- at least in country side . There are so many mights about this suits – it was invented as a union dress code for farmers and and it still has such opposition meaning in Vienna where you maybe can not see it .

Regards from Graz / Austria

[Noble Savage]

Let me put this as a question: what if any is the difference in style or effect, in your views, between PMoK's and Lord Louis's standing collars, under which no collared shirt is worn (and which in PMoK's case is noticeably not snug against his neck) and those of Toscanini, Nehru, and all the '60s Nehru-jacket wearers who wore either banded shirts or turtlenecks visibly under their standing-collar jackets?

Military tunics are worn with what is known as a patrol collar, it fits under the tunic's own.